DOWN TO EARTH Festival to Celebrate Outdoor Performance in City Parks and Public Spaces

DOWN TO EARTH will bring world-class international performance, theater, contemporary circus, an opera installation, and participatory events-absolutely free-directly to New York City's vibrant, diverse communities. 

An initiative that embraces global exchange and democratizes cultural expression, the inaugural festival runs from August 29-September 7, 2025. Conceived by The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The CUNY Graduate Center, which serves as the festival's producer, organizational home, and fiscal agent.

Here in NYC, partnering with parks in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens and collaborating with more than 10 dynamic cultural and community organizations, we're staging performances and workshops across multiple urban spaces. Citizen expression beats at the heart of our artistic vision; Down to Earth affirms art's critical role in the economic, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers.

Outdoor creations, international contemporary circus, and in-situ participatory performances are ideal means of reaching new audiences: they are powerful expressions of communal space, championing public assembly, and democratizing access to the urban commons. DOWN TO EARTH is a crucible of ideas in action, forging connections between community organizations and CUNY Stages, affirming art's critical role in the economic, political, social, and mental well-being of all New Yorkers.

The festival also proposes a novel reading of the spaces, demonstrating how they can be used and understood. This mirrors the ways social and political action can produce unexpected effects, insights, and actions. We're focusing on how artistic presence transforms the experience of place, and the powerful role of outdoor creation in transforming communities and spaces.

DOWN TO EARTH seeks to expand access to cultural expression, privilege public assembly, and combat the injustices inherent in socio-economic exclusion. Central to the festival's mission is our commitment to dismantling cultural barriers by offering free programs for students, youth, immigrant communities, and families. By attracting a diverse public to free street arts and in-situ performances that are accessible and inviting, the festival will redress the shortcomings of an expensive system of cultural dissemination.

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The 2025 inaugural Festival Program, August 29-September 7, 2025, features seven international productions, workshops, interactive events, ten presentations of PRELUDE, a festival-within-a-festival, focusing on artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance, and two symposia that explore themes of migration, diversity, social justice, theatre as a tool of resistance, intergenerational alliance, climate change, and our imperiled democracy. Performances will be held across various New York City parks and public spaces.

Seven international productions: multidisciplinary performance, contemporary circus, and an opera installation

Soka Tira Osoa by Cie BASINGA, with French-Congolese high wire artist Tatiana Mosio-Bongonga (France), a performance that turns tightrope walking into a collaboration between artist and audience

Ancrage and SenCirk Duo, from Senegal's only circus troupe, SenCirk, founded by former street child Modou Touré, explores themes including migration and living in harmony with nature

Traces (Lands) by Théâtre de l'Entrouvert's Elise Vigneron (France), a plastic and choreographic project representing a human community, through the image of a choir made of feet molded out of ice

Arch, a UK-based production studio Kaleider's operatic work of installation art, in which the performers struggle to build a freestanding arch out of blocks of concrete and ice

HIT OUT by Parini Secondo (Italy), a choreographic and musical composition wherein a jump rope is repurposed as a rhythmic and choreographic percussive instrument

SANTE! by Le Cirque Kikasse (Quebec), a dynamic circus show featuring extreme acrobatics and breathtaking balancing acts, whose stage is an extraordinary food truck

"Poetic Consultations," a Τhéâtre de la Ville, Paris, and DOWN TO EARTH Festival initiative, in three boroughs, five languages

PRELUDE, a Festival-within-a-Festival, ten site-specific performances across all five boroughs with artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary, and mediatized performance:

Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, by Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, with excerpts of her workshop project based on Brecht's Life of Galileo

Endsieg: The Second Coming, an English language reading of a new play by Elfriede Jelinek, featuring Nicole Ansari-Cox and directed by Milo Rau

In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, by Bernard-Marie Koltès, co-directed by translator Amin Efrain (Iran/US) and Isaach de Bankolé (Ivory Coast/US), with Ismail ibn Conner and Tony Torn

FLEXN, PAINTN, SPEAKN, with Quamaine Daniels and Reggie Gray

"Parliament": A work by choreographer and artist Michael Kliën / Laboratory for Social Choreography (Duke University)

The Tales of Black Histories, By Édouard Glissant (1972), Martinique, Caribbean, Directed by Keith Josef Adkins/The New BlackFest

Live in NYC and Ukraine: The Down to Earth and Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival collaboration with Kyiv Contemporary Music Days

The Nannies of New York City, KATIANA GONÇALES RANGEL (Brazil) + KATIE BROOK (NY)

Solidarność, a town hall encounter in a city park

A Lenape Creation Story of Turtle Island, conceived by Eagle Project. Written & performed by Opalanietet, with music by Danielle Jagelski. Directed by Ash Marinaccio

Two Symposia: Day 1 at Graduate Center CUNY and Day 2 at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) at LaGuardia Community College:

Day 1: Milo Rau's RESISTANCE NOW, a one-day conference/Town Hall at The CUNY Graduate Center